“I Don’t Agree With Your (Gay) Lifestyle”

Every now and then I suspect we all are part of a conversation when a line is dropped that stuns us so that we do not know how to react. The sentence is offered without forecasting that an outrageous comment will follow. Once we hear it there is a split second of thinking we surely misheard the words. In another split second, we know that since we are even thinking about the possibility of mishearing the words it only confirms with certainty that we did, in fact, hear them.

I was recently in an otherwise polite back-and-forth conversation when the train left the tracks with the entire passenger car hurled off the wooden trestle like in a Hollywood film. After stating I was kind, smart, and always helped people when a need arose, but without alerting me that the rail tracks ahead were washed out, I was told, “But I don’t agree with your lifestyle”.  I wanted to find a calendar and determine that it was still the 21^st century and that the room where I sat had not slipped through a wormhole or time portal in space. 

Absolute bigotry has to be called out and ended.

I have heard those uneducated words directed at me before about my ‘lifestyle’, but it has been many years.  I was in line at a small buffet with a woman whose birthday we were observing with a special party in her honor. There is no better way to say thanks for attending and dropping off a card and money than to state while standing over the veggie and dip platter that “I don’t agree with your lifestyle”. My first thought was having heard no news of her Tourette’s syndrome. What amused me as I took tomatoes and celery sticks and added them to my plate was how people had for decades gossiped and laughed (quietly, of course) about the rumor of her husband impregnating his sister-in-law. But that was a lifestyle choice that apparently was worthy of acceptance. When her husband died people wondered if the funeral would resemble that of Francios Mitterrand who made international news when both his wife and mistress were in line alongside the coffin. The photo in The New York Times remains priceless.  (Oh, yes my check in the birthday card was cashed.)

One of the teenage boys receiving services when I worked as a program director in a Madison mentorship non-profit was gay. The goal was to match him with an adult mentor who would be a positive role model to steer him away from the law-breaking that had caught him in the legal process. I recall having read some of the reports about how he was upset concerning his sexuality and having a hard time accepting it. The rash actions of breaking and entering were symptoms of the larger problem of coming to terms with himself. The mentorship program was designed to provide sage advice and a good listening ear for the tough time he was experiencing.  Clearly, the teenager had not chosen a sexual ‘lifestyle’.  He was born gay and likely would have been fine with that fact were it not for harmful peer pressures and societal bigotry.

When I heard the offensive line recently that “I don’t agree with your lifestyle” my mind flashed to that teenager sitting on a sofa in the part of our office area for such conversations. I had taken the job helping in the mentorship program as I knew what the absence of one person listening and understanding felt like when I was in those upside-down teenage years. I had vowed when I landed on the other side of my personal storm (the winds died down in my year at broadcasting school and the sun broke through in Door County when at WDOR) that I would find a way to lend a hand and help teenagers in those awkward times.  Shortly after leaving my statehouse job in 1994, another door opened for me where I could put my empathy to work for youth needing help.

If I was not so blasted Midwestern, I would have made it clear to the person recently offering their personal view of my “lifestyle” that one does not select a sexual choice.  Asking someone when they decided to be straight is as ridiculous as asking a person when they decided to be gay. Would I have chosen to have farm boys with no future for their lives beyond the acres their dad owned to bully and pummel me over the years I went to school? No. Would I have chosen to have my best friend commit suicide shortly after high school graduation because he was gay and bullied, too? No. But I am glad to be a gay man. I am a stronger, wiser, and more determined man for having walked my path. I like who I am and never once, not even in high school, had a problem accepting myself.  It was all the rubes, bigots, and truly under-educated cretins I had to confront in life that were the trouble.

It goes without saying that my sexuality or that of any other gay person, is not up for review by anyone so there is not anything to agree or disagree with in the first place. Sexuality is part of a person’s identity. It is not logical or factual to say that sexuality is a choice.  As I have stated numerous times on Caffeinated Politics concerning a bevy of issues, education, or the lack of it, is central to how a person views any topic.  Stating that being gay is a ‘lifestyle’ truly underscores a dearth of book learning.